Welsh Health Survey | Participants

Your address was chosen at random from the Postcode Address File. This list is held by the Post Office and is available to the public. The study will involve 15,000 people throughout Wales. Each year, around 10,000 households are invited to take part in the survey.

Each year a random sample of addresses is selected and people who live at these addresses are asked to take part in the survey.

Each selected address is sent a letter with information about the study. An interviewer then calls at the address to provide more information and, if you agree to take part, to carry out a short household interview. The interviewer will ask you questions and record your responses on a paper questionnaire.

All adults in the household are then invited to fill in a short paper questionnaire. We also invite up to 2 children in each household to take part and have separate questionnaires for children aged 0-3, 4-12 and 13-15. The interviewer will also ask to measure height and weight for children aged 2-15.

The interviewer will leave the questionnaires for you to fill in and arrange to collect these at a later date.

One adult in each household will be asked to take part in a short household interview. The interviewer asks a series of questions and records the answers.

All adults in the household will be asked to complete a short paper questionnaire. Adults will also be asked to complete a questionnaire for selected children aged 12 and under, with children aged 13-15 having their own questionnaire.

The interviewer will also ask to measure the height and weight of children aged 2-15.

You will be asked to complete a short questionnaire with questions about:

• your general health and wellbeing
• your lifestyle, including physical activity, smoking and fruit and vegetable consumption
• health services you have used, including doctor, dentist and hospital services.

Each year around 15,000 adults and 3,000 children take part in the Welsh Health Survey.

Taking part is completely up to you, but we hope you will be willing to help because we cannot get this information in any other way. If you decide to take part you do not have to answer any particular question if you would prefer not to.

It is important that we speak to as many people as possible so we can get a really accurate picture of the health of people in Wales.

The study covers general health issues and will not take up much of your time.

The Welsh Assembly Government has asked the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) to carry out the Welsh Health Survey. NatCen is independent of all government departments and political parties.

NatCen has a team of around 1,000 highly trained interviewers. An interviewer will visit your address in person.  All our interviewers have gone through a strict security check and carry photo identification.

If you have been asked to take part in the Welsh Health Survey, NHS Direct Wales can provide you with information about the study and, if needed, arrange for a Welsh speaking interviewer to contact you.

NHS Direct Wales also provide healthcare advice and information 24 hours a day.  You can contact them by phone (0845 46 47) or through the NHS Direct Wales website.

All information that you give will be strictly confidential. The only people who will see your name and address are the NatCen research team. The interviewer will tell you more about confidentiality when they call.

You will not receive any junk mail as a result of taking part. We do not pass addresses on to other organisations for commercial purposes.

Your answers will be treated in the strictest confidence in accordance with the Data Protection Act. Along with the answers of everyone else who takes part, the results will be anonymised and published at a later date. No-one will be able to identify you from the published results in any way.

You can choose to be interviewed in either English or Welsh - just tell the interviewer your preference. If you want to be interviewed in Welsh, and the interviewer does not speak Welsh, they will arrange for a Welsh-speaking interviewer to call back later. All study documents are available in both languages.

Yes, please. Everyone is different - we need to hear from many different people to get a true picture of the health of everyone in Wales.

With your help, we can improve people's health in Wales.

We hope you will be willing to take part, as your address has been specially chosen by random selection to be part of the study and we can't give your place to anyone else.

Linking your survey answers to other records gives us extra information that can be used to understand differences in health.

For example: In the Welsh Health Survey you were asked how much physical activity you did last week. If survey answers are linked to GP records, in the future we could look at how physical activity at a young age affected people's health later on in their life.

The consent form asks for your permission to link your survey answers to other records that the NHS and other public organisations hold about you.

To be able to do this, the NHS in Wales will need your name, address, sex and date of birth. By signing the consent form, you give us permission to pass this information to the NHS in Wales

If you sign the consent form, the NHS in Wales and a Welsh Government funded research unit at Swansea University will work together to link your survey answers with records the NHS and other public organisations hold about you. This includes records that could be held about you in the future.

Your personal details will be kept confidential. Your information will be given a personal reference number and your name, address and postcode removed from your survey answers. The personal reference number will be used to match your survey answers to other records about you. This means your survey answers and other details will be kept completely anonymous.

The anonymous linked data will be made available to researchers from organisations like Universities and local authorities for projects that have been approved by the Welsh Government.

These organisations must sign a confidentiality agreement preventing them from passing the information on to anyone else. They will not be able to identify any individuals.

Yes. Your survey answers are very important as they allow us to understand health in Wales. If you choose not to give us permission to link your survey answers will be used without being linked to other records.

The green leaflet for the Welsh Health Survey 2011 provides more information about how your answers will be used if you do not want us to link your data.

If you agree now but change your mind later, all you need to do is telephone 029 2082 6685 or write to us at the address below:

FAO: Welsh Health Survey (P3083)
National Centre for Social Research,
Kings House,
101-135, Kings Road,
Brentwood,
Essex
CM14 4LX

We have included some of the main findings from the 2009 Welsh Health Survey here. Reports from earlier studies are available on the Welsh Assembly Government website.